Couple opens escape room in downtown Greeley

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When puzzle-lovers or newcomers walk through the door of Kris Maloy and JolieBeth Boudreaux's escape room in downtown Greeley, they can expect to step into an entirely different reality — like a patient checking into a creepy asylum during the 1930s, to be exact.

Random — or perhaps strategically placed — "blood" splatters the walls and white hospital curtains distinguish parts of the dark room. A flickered lamp in the corner provides the only source of light.

It's not a haunted house, Maloy said, but it has the eeriness of a PG-13 thriller.

Maloy and Boudreaux founded the Q Live Escape Experience, which is an escape room business with roots in Loveland, and now, Greeley. They decided to expand their business from Loveland to cater to the Greeley crowd. By day, Maloy is a professor of music and Boudreaux is a licensed psychotherapist, but by night, they're escape room fanatics and owners.

Greeley's room, "The Asylum," 810 9th St., is a new escape room in Greeley's downtown area. It opened about a month ago and moved from the couple's original location in Loveland. "Patients" have an hour to solve the clues and find their way out of the room. About 30 percent of people make it out of the room on time. Maloy said the business has seen about 100 customers since their opening day.

Greeley's second room is expected to open by the spring and will loosely be based on the Salem Witch Trials, the couple said.

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Q is the couple's first business together. They call it a traditional "family-owned" business — even their 9-year-old daughter, Karoline, helps out with resetting the rooms from time to time. They have two open escape rooms, "Area Q" in Loveland and "The Asylum" in Greeley. The duo also has two escape rooms in the works, one in Loveland — "The Path of the Gods," which is near completion — and Greeley's other room. Their goal is to let the rooms run for about a year, giving their customers a new game to play every six months, Maloy said.

"A big mistake people will do is not change and let a room be the same for two to three years," he said. "We want to shake that up."

Pam Bricker, executive director of the Downtown Development Authority, said Q was a "natural fit" to Greeley's downtown area. She said it's fun for the city to provide multiple entertainment options downtown, aside from just eating and drinking.

It reinforces the fact the city is growing and expanding, she said. She said she hopes it will attract visitors from outside of Greeley, as well as locals.

"We're starting to get some of the cool new things that other cities have," Bricker said. "Those escape rooms are kind of like breweries. People get into it, so they'll want to experience the next one, too, whether that's in Fort Collins, Denver or Greeley."

Boudreaux added that the escape room provides an entertainment option for all demographics in Greeley, be they college students or women in sewing circles.

"It draws all types of people in because it is very different and interactive," she said. "It's not like, 'Lets go to a movie together.' You're in (the room) and you have this common goal. You're no longer just a group of people, but a team working together."

She and Maloy fell in love with escape rooms a few years ago in their hometown in Oklahoma, after trying one for her birthday. But they found themselves a bit critical of the design and overall objective.

"We thought it was super fun, but at the same time, we were like, 'Well, they should have done this different, and this wasn't great and this also wasn't great,' " Maloy said.

After that, they flirted with the idea of opening their own escape room. But it wasn't until the family discovered they were moving to Fort Collins that they decided to "just go for it." That was about two years ago, and they opened their Loveland location shortly after the move.

Each prop and clue in Greeley's new 560 square-foot room is somehow tied into the overall storyline and objective of the adventure — an aspect Q customers can expect in each of the couple's rooms.

"We're really invested in having an immersive experience," Boudreaux said. "Designing our rooms takes about three to four months because of that."

Using Boudreaux's psychology background and Maloy's stealthy video game knowledge, the two invent and design their escape rooms to have a particular unique theme. They also try to include different puzzles in the room that cater to different types of thinking and intelligences.

"We craft the theme and story first, then we try our best to make sure all the puzzles in the room serve that," Maloy said. "Our idea was to put people into another world or another environment. It's kind of a waste of an opportunity to just put somebody into an office or hotel room with no correlating puzzles."

That had been their experience in a few different rooms; they wanted to stray from being uninteresting. That's also why the design of their Greeley room is intentionally challenging. It doesn't necessarily put customers' victories as a first priority.

That's for a good reason, though.

"The most unsatisfying room we ever did was not one where we didn't get out — it was one we won in 14 minutes," Maloy said. "If the puzzles are crafty and the room is a great experience, it's nice to win, but what you really enjoy is the immersive experience."

* An earlier version of this article reported The Q Live Experience's as the first and only escape room in Greeley. Colorado Escape also has rooms in Greeley, located at 807 17th St., Suite G.